The Promereo
The Promereo is a dactylic hexameter epic commissioned in three acts over twelve books. Originally commissioned by Dictator Agostino of the former Archipelago Empire as a propaganda tool to salvage the declining morals and solidarity of the empire, it is the greatest work of Lacewing poet Jairus. While the legend is present in sculpture and art across the Skylands and each island has written accounts of separate events, this is the only complete version that has survived to present day. Despite the tone advocating themes of strong leadership in uncertain times, the text contained empire subversive references to separate cultures, fate, and the influence of desire on perspective. The narrative also contained many moments of personification of the gods. Commonly accepted as part of the myth but combined with what Agostino considered other 'blasphemies against the state' led Jairus to exile until his death. Books 1-4: The Mirror of Silros The prologue addresses the aftermath of the Worldfire. While Asmodeus takes custody of Chak Tha, ten of the gods led by Laredos take stewardship of repairing a burned world. Heartsick, guilt stricken, and bitter at having dealt the final blow to his only surviving sibling, Silros spurns the company of the other gods, choosing to wander with mortals. He chooses a small continent in the calm center of the northern, southern, eastern, and western currents to make his permanent home. The traditional story of dividing the duties of Chak Tha is also given as different gods assume stewardship of of Chak Tha's deific portfolio and move to patronage of different nation states and races. A version of The Fire Song of Liea, Liea's taming of Chak Tha's destructive fire, is also displayed in full in these books. As ages rise and fall, all of the other gods withdraw from physical manifestation amongst the Skylands, choosing instead to work through divinely empowered worshippers to guide mortals. In the Age of Rerum, the tiny continent of Promissu was the peaceful home of the grand Abbey of Silros. It was a land of charity graced by tithes to use the mythical Mirror of Silros. The Mirror of Silros would allow anyone to call the visage of their future self one year from the day once in a lifetime. They could ask a single question of their future self about any subject, and the visage would answer truthfully with the wisdom they had from one year later. Repeated attempts to ask questions go unanswered. Calling your visage and not receiving an answer on your only question meant that imminent death awaited you within the next year. Just as talking to your visage did not guarantee invincibility for a year, even those who garnered no response could use this knowledge of likelihood to sometimes prevent an ambiguous death. Wise kings, generals, and religious leaders would make the pilgrimage during times of famine, war, or great strife, and the Mirror of Silros served the prudence and stability of the Skylands for centuries. Much of this series of books contains visits from the many nations and continents of the Skylands of that era. The way they ask and react to the questions and answers from the Mirror illustrate the various themes of duty, sacrifice, discipline, and national loyalty that characterized the idealized Archipelago Empire leader. Books 5-8: The Great Skylands War Para Lictor Astleer of the witch continent of Brom saw an opportunity for military dominance in the Mirror of Silros. In the name of Asmodeus he marched his forces on Promissu, imprisoned the Abbot and the other monks of Silros, and began selecting soldiers he would field in key positions of battle, using them to ask the mirror about favorable terrain, success of attacks on continent defenses, and which targets were most vulnerable. He launched an unprecedented war campaign, bewildering continents with his ability to move within the blind spots of every army. To those who would not surrender he would destroy, enslave, and conscript. In each battle he demanded that leaders be taken prisoner, forcing them to reveal counter attacks and locations of artifacts and weapons with the Mirror of Silros. Silros reveals himself to the reader, leaves the island secretly in search of a champion to drive the armies of Asmodeus away. He passes over the just champion Wender of Emden as he fails a test of resolve to win at any cost. He passes over the most powerful champion Orst of Madral because he fails a test of temptation. He chooses a dragonborn warrior named Korkon of Darenkov, whose boundless hatred for Astleer and Brom in the wake of Darenkov's complete razing and submission to Asmodeus fueled his singleminded quest to end the war and stop the misuse of the Mirror. Silros gifts Korkon with the glaive Excidio, a weapon that can destroy anything the wielder wishes, and tells him of Astleer's corrupt use of his Mirror. Much of the last couple of books details Korkon's travels as he carves his way to each of the struggling continents fighting independently against the forces of Brom. He convinces the leaders of multiple nations to unite against Brom. The last free continents, Savarra, Emden, Madral, Ilstrade, Truddig, Kahir, and The Li Union, join forces to form the first Archipelago. Book 9-12: Promereo Leagues away from the newly formed alliance, the Mirror of Silros stops answering questions asked by Astleer's soldiers. Astleer exhausts every military officer in his army to ask questions of the Mirror, each one receiving no answer in return. Seeing this as a sign, Astleer begins fortifying Promissu, using it's citizens and prisoners of war from across the Skylands as slave labor. Korkon, empowered by Excidio, single handedly strikes down armies and leads the united forces of the alliance. Aerial battles deplete the airship fleets of both the Alliance and Brom until every available ship is scrounged for a final offensive on Promissu. International fleets land on every corner of the continent, heroes rise and fall battling ever closer to the infernally tainted Abbey of Silros. While the main army threw itself against legions of hell knights, devils, and slaves, Korkon leads a small group of champions on a direct assault of the Abbey. Korkon's rampage intensifies as his allies, his friends, sacrifice themselves against the diabolic hazards of the Abbey, now corrupted by fiendish taint, and throw themselves at Astleer's generals. By the time Korkon reaches Astleer's throne room, he is the only one left. Korkon duels Astleer and his bodyguards. As Korkon slays Astleer's devils, a wild swing cuts off a shard of the mirror. Astleer retreats, shard in hand, deeper and deeper into the lower levels of the Abbey. Astleer escapes through a portal to Hell, abandoning his armies. With his power broken, the armies of Hell retreat. The armies chase or exterminate the last vestiges of Hell's army and converge on the Abbey, eventually finding Korkon sitting on the throne. Finally having broken Brom's hold over the island, the surviving officers of the united army assume leadership of their respective continents and begin the process of pacifying the island. The burial of the champions of the united nations takes place and we are given a lengthy listing of the minor officers and nobility present on the island that are forced to leap from leadership of small armies to rulers of entire nations. Korkon secludes himself in the altar room of the Abbey, appointing himself guardian of the mirror. As the various inexperienced rulers of the continents examine the vast wealth, territory, and eldritch secrets that fill the treasure hoard left behind by Brom, infighting starts, each continent arguing for a greater portion of the wealth for contributing most to the fighting or in compensation for the worst of Brom's atrocities. Old grudges and rivalries begin to reemerge as the armies begin to segregate nationalistically. Korkon pretends to sleep, and overhears one by one as each nation begins questioning the mirror in secret, using Astleer's technique to ask about favorable terrain, strategic weakness, and battle conditions for war against their fellow allies. Each time, the mirror says nothing to them in return. Korkon makes a new proclamation that the mirror is off limits and bars the doors of the Abbey. A secret siege begins. As the leaders of the nations publicly slander Korkon as hoarding the Mirror and the treasures inside the Abbey, each of them sends a representative to sway Korkon. Some, like the newly crowned Pharaoh of Savarra sent agents to bribe Korkon with wealth, prestige, and lands. Some, like the brother of the hero Wender, played on Korkon's sentiment for his fallen friends. But as each country found Korkon incorruptible, they turned to violence, sending assassins, poisoners, and sorcerors to eliminate Korkon. Each one Korkon would send back crippled. Two weeks later, with the airship fleets of the entire alliance crippled, the small continent overcrowded, resources running low, and Korkon not answering from behind the fortified walls of the Abbey, tensions between former allies snap. The leaders of the nations meet one last time, each voicing their frustrations with Korkon, each recounting their grievances and sacrifices to claim the largest portions of wealth and access to the mirror. Pharaoh Intef, quiet for the bickering of nations, suddenly proclaims that his nation deserves the largest share, because he has received word that his assassins have killed Korkon. Grim silence fills the field tent. Each of the leaders of state excuse themselves. Controversy There are multiple versions of the final epilogue of The Promereo. This is largely due to revisions made after Jairus became a vocal political opponent to Agostino's decision to dissolve the council and rule as a dictator. Scholarly papers that have survived to this day have commented on Agostino's physical similarity to Pharaoh Intef, a common scapegoat for corrupt rulership that appears in the later books. Historians believe that the lack the poetic flourishes common to Jairus' prose in the Imperial version are due to government sanctioned revisions. Commentary by historians that claimed to have viewed the unedited text suggest there have also been entire sections removed, including a series of stanzas describing Korkon following Astleer into hell, approaching Chak Tha's prison, and having a conversation with her. The sanitized version approved by Dictator Agostino contains Silros himself manifesting, punishing the corrupt leaders for their greed, and exiling the armies to the savage mercy of the winds. Scholar's have argued which of many versions is the most authentic, but the rediscovery of Prommisu and it's similarity to to a version supposedly smuggled piece meal out of the empire after Jairus' exile have put the Post-Jairan Promereo at the forefront of Rerum era study. The Post-Jairan Finale A mutil front melee begins as each of the allied armies fracture and begin charging the front gates of the abbey with battering rams. Sacrificing the last of their veteran bodyguard retinues, each of the heads of state reach the Mirror room at the same time. There they find Korkon's poisoned lifeless body, still standing, gripping Excidio. Pharaoh Intef reaches for Excidio first, and as he turns to dust the flash of light that follows animates Korkon. His war cry shatters every window in the abbey as he thrusts the blade of Excidio through the flagstones and into the island itself. Black bubbling pitch rises from the soil turning Korkon and Excidio to stone. The shockwave travels all the way to the edges of the island, sinking the last of the airships in the alliance. The surviving leaders retreat from the throne room, calling a truce, muttering about cursed treasure. With every last airship destroyed, they rely on the dwindling supply of spell casters strong enough to teleport to return to their home continents to relay orders for reinforcement. The first sign that something has gone wrong comes when magical sendings reveal that half of the spell casters never arrived at their home continents. A similar toll is taken on those who try to teleport back, leading to tense moments of mutiny and execution of spell casters disobeying orders to establish supply chains with home. Then all manner of plants and trees begin to die. In three days the entire continent is covered in dead grass and shrunken crisp husks of trees. The smallest spark sets foliage ablaze, leading to many deaths. Then the survivors start to notice that they can never get enough food. No matter how much they eat, or what they eat, food fails to sustain them until, trapped on an island with no escape, plants, animals, people, everyone begins to starve. Most of the last portion describes in lurid detail the various ways that each of the surviving armies faced their demise and the special curse laid upon their portion of Promissu, much of it a thematic callback to how the nations faced the mirror of Silros in the first act. The Savarran's, mad with hunger, awakened old racial hatreds, each cat folk and each rat folk savagely devouring each other until the slopes ran with blood. The forces of the Li Union, seeing the curse as a punishment for their greed, leapt as one off the southern lip of Promissu, consigning their fate to the roil and flooding the southern portion of the island with wraiths. The forces of Emdem and Madral formed an alliance to search for Astleer's fabled portal to hell hidden deep in the recesses of the Abbey while they still had the strength, eager to go down fighting the forces of evil in penance for their hubris. They enter the doors of the Cathedral and never come out. The armies of Truddig resigned themselves to their fate, climbing to the top of a mountain and dying in prayer, wasting away into nothing. The soldiers of Kahir spent their last moments futilely scavenging anything they could use to put together an airship or some safe means of escaping Promissu. They die with their tools in hand. The survivors of Ilstrade, having borne the worst of the fighting both on their devastated continent and the final rush for the treasure room, also turned towards the Abbey to find Astleer's secret portal to hell. They planned to throw themselves before the mercy of Asmodeus. They also enter the Abbey and never come out. The last group addressed in the final chapter was made of defectors from each of the allied nations, struggling to pool their resources and advantages. They cooperate to commune with the god of the land, reaching out to Silros himself. Silros appears, and the allied group makes a desperate plea for mercy, begging, groveling. Silros explains that Excidio's last strike had killed the continent of Promissu. For all eternity the land would be cursed with a starvation that no food could sate, that no magic could sustain, that no trick could avoid. He would leave the mirror as it was, still capable of answering any one question, but kept in the middle of a trap for fools whose greed and avarice would literally starve them. Cultural Impact The Promereo, believed to be a myth for generations, still held great merit to scholars as the earliest multi continent epic to survive to the modern age. Many continents have their own partial version of the story or at least excerpts, and it is not uncommon for Rerum era and even pre-Rerum ruins to have portions of the story carved into their architecture. The Promereo's impact on the study of history due to it's close identification with the rule of the Agostinian imperial family is a window into a turbulent world where for a time a great number of the continents of the Skylands stood united before decadence and vanity diminished the empire until it's complete collapse a century later. As well the vivd recording of the war, it's inclusion of religious fables, and it's intricate poetry have kept the story relevant to philosophers, literary scholars, and students of law. While it has been criticized for archaic language and dry text, The Promereo remains a common requirement in young adult curriculum. The rediscovery of the continent of Promissu a half a century ago has reframed those assertions. Scholars are now beginning to ask if Promissu is not a myth, what other of the fantastical treasures, legacies, and magics from the Promereo are also real? A new golden age of Archeology has begun on many of the islands in the Skylands as a result, each searching for their own continent's mythical claim to fame in the Promereo. While Promeran era discoveries are rare, everyday dedicated scholars produce new artifacts and insights into a recorded past as turbulent and sketchy as the Roil. Promissu itself is still largely unexplored. The few dangers of the continent that have been catalogued, powerful starving undead and the starvation curse that reached for miles out past the edges of the continent, have made it impossible for lengthy trips. As well, the Promerans, a fringe cult of worshippers of Silros, have nominated themselves as the wardens of the island and patrons of the legend. They skirt the edges of the starvation curse letting explorers onto the island but then sabotaging any attempt for explorers to leave. Any travelers coming within air currents that run parallel to Prommisu are warned not to get too close to the continent's travel range and to be wary of gaunt figures piloting lashed together ships.